The Historical Sheet Music Collections at Houghton have been yielding some weird cover art lately. Here are a few in honor of April foolishness: This song tells the story of a gentleman escorting a lady friend to a cabaret, where she pawns him off on a female friend enamoured of his wealth; her friend calls…
Summer loving
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Flower children, hippies, acid freaks, drop outs, college students, political activists, middle-class tourists, and even some military personnel, all of them were there in San Francisco during the Summer of Love in 1967. The Haight-Ashbury district commonly…
Houghton 2016-2017 Fellows Announced
Each year, Houghton Library awards grants to defray the costs of travel and lodging for scholars using our collections. We are pleased to announce the following 21 fellowship awards for the 2016-2017 cycle….
“Be the envy of your friends and neighbors”
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. The Santo Domingo collection contains plenty of material about various smoking paraphernalia, but Build This Bong has some extremely creative diagrams for building said paraphernalia. Taking a light hearted yet technical approach to the subject, author…
Houghton Offers Fellowship for Visiting Librarian/Archivist
This year we are pleased to be one of the sites selected to participate in Harvard’s Administrative Fellowship Program. Now in its 26th year, the program “seeks to attract talented professionals, and in particular, members of historically underrepresented groups, to promote leadership opportunities and careers in higher education.” This full-time position, which includes salary and…
Acupuncture Anesthesia
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. In the 1950s Chinese physicians in the People’s Republic of China began to wonder if acupuncture, which was typically used to treat pain, could actually be used to prevent pain during surgical procedures, which led to…
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day
Houghton’s Historical Sheet Music Collections have a wealth of music about Ireland; many songs are American, whether adaptations of traditional Irish tunes, or songs from Tin Pan Alley, Broadway musicals or vaudeville. Here are some examples in honor of Saint Patrick’s Day. [chorus] The minstrell boy to the war has gone, and bold Jack Donoghue…
Carlyle’s bequest
Upon the death of the Scottish philosopher, novelist, historian, and mathematician Thomas Carlyle in 1881, a portion of his personal library was left to Harvard – the only public bequeathal in Carlyle’s will. The annual report of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College for that year quotes the relevant passage, which reads in part:…
Three Hamlets film series
The Harvard Film Archive and Houghton Library are partnering to screen three critically acclaimed adaptations of Shakespeare’s most enduring play, beginning with Laurence Olivier’s 1948 classic on Monday, March 21 at 7pm. Join curators Dale Stinchcomb and Peter Accardo for a free pre-show tour of the exhibition, Shakespeare: His Collected Works at 6pm in Houghton…
How Old Will You Be in 1984?
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. At the height of the Vietnam War, a time often remembered for the vigorous anti-war protests from young adults, particularly college students, Diane Divoky edited an anthology collection of pieces from underground high school newspapers from…